Rising Card Escape

You’ve heard it said that the harshest conditions cannot dampen a pure heart and courageous spirit. That’s how I started Magic Friday off today. It was a story about an ancient Mayan Kingdom. It was about oppression, courage, redemption and freedom. Anyone familiar with the Tarbell Volumes
would have instantly recognized “Rising Card Escape”. This effect always appealed to me but I never worked on it, much less perform it. It has (in my view) all the elements of quality card magic. A card is freely selected and returned to the middle of the pack. After showing the top and bottom cards to be indifferent, the pack is then placed back into the box. A handkerchief is used to tie the card case to the performer’s hand. The card is then seen to penetrate the card box and rise up its full height out of the pack. I’ve never seen it performed but it seemed to me to be a strongly visual effect. Recently I have been itching to do an effect with a full deck of jumbo cards. After rejecting a number of interesting card effects I remembered “Rising Card Escape”. I tried strapping the jumbo deck to my hand to see if it would work. It did! So I set down to adapt this effect to jumbo cards.
The first hurtle was how to deal with the pass. Naturally, classic, turn-over and their like were right out. Next, I tried the “Simplified Pass”. I didn’t like that because it involved shuffling cards after the selection was returned to the deck.
(Something I try to avoid). In fact, that reminded me of something I recently read in Ian Kendall’s wonderful column in MUM. A “Hindu Control”. Perfect. Many thanks Ian!
Next I tried a rough version of the trick on my 11 year old daughter. She liked it, but saw right through it. Dilemma: Be casual, never “prove” anything. On the other hand casually showing the cards on top and bottom to be indifferent wasn’t strong enough to power up the magical moment. If I was going to do this effect for Magic Friday I would have to fix this problem. So after a little thought, a top change and a double lift I felt I had the mechanics down for an effective “Rising Card Escape” using a jumbo deck.
It took a little longer than I thought it would to become natural with the basic sleights using a jumbo deck. But after a couple of days I felt pretty good about them. The real struggle was the storyline. Why would the signed (labeled) card rise up through the card case anyway? Was the card hypnotized? Nah. Should I go science? “…The card has a positive charge and will be repelled by…” Nope. That didn’t feel right either. How about a “Houdini” card that can escape? No. Too done! This is always the hardest part for me. I never was much of a story teller.
Anyway I settled on a story of humility, courage, persecution and yes, life after death. Although it’s a Judeo-Christian value I clothed the story as an ancient Mayan folk tale. The two black jacks (which were removed at the beginning of the trick)


served as the jailors. After the card was lost in the deck one jailor was positioned at the front of the jail and the other at the rear. This was my solution (and justification) to demonstrate the chosen card was not on the top or bottom but indeed lost somewhere within the deck.
So how did it go? Frankly, not so good. When it was time for the first performance, I was still having trouble with my own script so I decided to forgo the storyline and do the trick straight. It went okay, but as I feared, it was emotionally barren. Later, while my students were working, I went over my lines. Memorizing them and fine tuning the script with the action. The second performance would include the script.

This performance turned out to be messier than a train wreck but not quite as pretty. I began the routine by screwing up right from the start. The top change was damn sloppy, and at least two people saw what I did. Fortunately since there is no transformation in this effect, it would be difficult to know what was effected or even why. All the same, no excuse. It was still fumbularity at its worst. I also forgot to show the two black jacks as the top and bottom cards. Without this
subtlety, all mystery would be sucked out of the magical moment at the end. I also couldn’t get the card to rise at first. After a painfully long time I had to adjust the pack tied to my hand. After that it started to budge and then rise. Eventually I discovered the label with signature was not placed flat against the surface of the card. This caused it to buckle and hang up inside the card case as it started to rise. And as a smelly little bow on an otherwise odiferous package, I stumbled all through my own script. Yep, all in all pretty sucky presentation. Without question, the worst performance I have ever subjected my students to. But wait, there’s more.
Toward the beginning, as a young man was signing the card, I had a visit from two of our assistant principals. One of my colleagues told them about “Magic Friday” and it was clear they were interested and even excited to see some magic and how the students positively respond to a 10 -15 minute entertainment break after a long week of school. Of all the gin joints and all the Fridays and all the classes, why in the name of everything that is holy did they have to be present for this stinker? Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t alert the authorities and have me charged with performance art abuse! Hackney mimes rejoice!

On the other hand, I am happy to report that I was able to pull everything together and the rest of the performances were astronomically improved. Passed Magic Friday effects like “Silk in Egg”, “Card in Orange” or “Silver & Glass” were enthusiastic “10’s”. Today’s later performances of “Rising Card Escape” scored about a “7”. (This of course doesn’t include the train wreck described above). If this effect, (when properly performed) scores a “7”, I am confident that with some more work on the script, more mirror time and a few more performances I can bump this effect up to at least a “9”.
I was prepared today to perform “Invisible Deck” just in case “Rising Card Escape” did not work out for some reason. After the fiasco of the 2nd performance I nearly dumped the effect all together. It’s funny. I was stubborn to perform my jumbo handling of “Rising Card Escape” before it was 100% ready. And I paid dearly for it too. But it was that same pig-headed stubbornness that told me not to give up and whip this thing into shape. It felt like I was breaking a horse, but before the day was over the effect surrendered to my handling and even purred a little. I look forward to working out the rough spots and putting some spit and polish on this routine. I believe I can make it an astounding winner with the right presentation. If I am wrong, I hope I will have the wisdom to put it down and work on something else. But for now I believe in the effect.